💭 Six Brit and Italian tourists injured and one killed in Tel Aviv suspected attack
A 30-year-old man from Italy was killed and four other people are receiving medical treatment for mild to moderate injuries after a car rammed into a group of people and flipped over in Tel Aviv, Israel
Police said a car rammed into a group of people near a popular seaside park before flipping over.
Police said they shot the driver of the car. The driver’s condition is unknown at the moment.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry referred to the incident as a “terror attack”, a term Israeli officials use for assaults by Palestinians.
🥚 That is, During Passover – and on the eve of Easter 🥚
These rockets were fired at the Galilee region in northern Israel. The Galilee is where many of the miracles of Jesus occurred, according to the New Testament, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
🔥 Rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Thursday and answered by a burst of cross-border artillery fire, officials said, amid escalating tension following Israeli police raids on the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
The Israeli military said it had intercepted at least one rocket as sirens sounded in northern towns near the border, while two Lebanese security sources said there had been at least two attacks, with multiple rockets.
Israeli news outlets reported that around 34 rockets were launched from Lebanon, half of which were intercepted, while five landed in Israeli areas. Israel’s ambulance service said one man had sustained minor shrapnel injuries.
In a written statement, the United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon (UNIFIL) described the situation as “extremely serious” and urged restraint. It said UNIFIL chief Aroldo Lazaro was in contact with authorities on both sides.
Israeli broadcasters showed large plumes of smoke rising above the northern town of Shlomi and public sector broadcaster Kan said the Israel Airports Authority closed northern air space, including over Haifa, to civilian flights.
“I’m shaking, I’m in shock,” Liat Berkovitch Kravitz told Israel’s Channel 12 news, speaking from a fortified room in her house in Shlomi. “I heard a boom, it was as if it exploded inside the room.”
✞ Christians have torn down a flower monument depicting the rainbow flag in East Beirut
In a video published by “Soldiers of God” on Facebook, one individual shouts to the camera “This neighborhood has churches in it, and you dare put up the gay flag? You have the devil inside you.”
The flower flag was designed by members of the community who, according to the video, were given permission by the city’s authorities to construct the flag in solidarity with the LGBT community in Beirut.
“There will be no Satan in Achrafieh – this neighbourhood is for the soldiers of God” shouted another member of the group, who quoted verses from the Bible as they tore down the installation.
On Friday, the Lebanese Minister of Interior added his voice to recent calls from religious authorities to condemn all public activities relating to the LGBT community.
In an open letter, Bassam Mawlawi claimed that “sexual perversion” was spreading in Lebanese society in contradiction to Lebanese customs.
According to Helem, a rights group that advocates for the LGBT community, “the letter was accompanied by extensive homophobic and transphobic hate speech on conservative print media and on social media”, as well as similar statements from religious leaders.
Helem accused political and religious elites of stirring up hatred and “moral sexual panic” as a distraction from Lebanon’s economic and political problems.
“Regimes and institutions who have failed in providing justice, safety and security for their people often rely on attacking and sacrificing marginalized communities to distract the public from their failures and corruption” said Helem in a statement published on Saturday.
Activists and allies of the LGBT community in Lebanon are meeting to protest the minister’s letter on Sunday, outside the interior ministry in Beirut.
“Go home and farm it is noble Holy and free from immorality of Arabs nations. Money will pass away but knowledge of caring for lambs and goats milking making cheese growing crops weaving cloth and life of prayer and raising your children is Noble. Trying to acquire wealth is evil”
„People in the middle east appear to be monstrously cruel. Why should Africans live in fear in Arab countries while Arabs do not live in fear in Africa? We must change it, make them feel our fear.“
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on November 26, 2014
Ethiopia is Africa’s biggest refugee-hosting country, yet, Ethiopian immigrants continue to be maltreated by the ever ungraceful and hostile neighboring nations. Whether it’s in Sudan, Somalia or other Arab-league member nations, for those cruel “neighbors” no excess seems to be too monstrous for them to commit.
Here are the latest acts of atrocious cruelty committed against Children of Ethiopia.
Ethiopian Maids Reveal Abuse From Employers in UAE
Two maids have spoken of the appalling abuse they claim was dished out by their employers, as a top diplomat called for an end to household “slavery”.
Hedja Ousman, 22, and Wube Tamene, 18, worked for families in the UAE and both say they were beaten, starved, and prevented from contacting their families in Ethiopia.
They have now sought refuge at the Ethiopian Consulate in Dubai.
Hedja, speaking to 7DAYS yesterday, told of the horrors she endured during the two years she worked for a Kazakh family in Ajman. She said her female employer didn’t like the prospect of the maid speaking to her husband.
She said: “My employer didn’t want me talking to her husband. Every time her husband would instruct me to do something, she would beat me.”
Hedja said the woman even cut off her hair to make her “less attractive”.
Hedja, who earned Dhs500 per month, said the abuse began three months after she started her job. She decided to escape last week when her employer accused her of stealing car keys and beat her.
“I saw the door open and I ran,” she said. I asked someone for water, they called the police for me. I’ve been at the consulate since. I want to go home.”
She has dropped the police case she had filed against her employer but the consulate says it intends to file a new one.
Wube worked for an Emirati family in Dubai and claims at one point she was starved for two days then shown a plate of food, which she thought was hers, only for her employers to throw it in the bin.
Ethiopia’s Consul General in Dubai, Yibeltal Aemero Alemu, said he is seeing “a lot” of such cases, branding it “slavery.”
Housemaid Wube Tamene dreamed of a new life and a decent standard of living in the UAE.
Instead she was made to cut up her clothes and clean her employer’s home with the rags.
The Ethiopian, aged just 18, claims she was also made to walk around in bare feet and was not paid a salary for 18 months.
She also claims she was regularly beaten. Wube is now seeking refuge at the Ethiopian consulate in Dubai, along with fellow maid Hedja Ousman, who escaped an abusive employer – a Kazakh woman – in Ajman.
Their cases have prompted Ethiopia’s Consul General in Dubai, Yibeltal Aemero Alemu, to call for such “slavery” to stop.
Alemu said the consulate is now seeing “a lot” of cases in UAE and has said his office would begin pursuing cases against abusive families.
He said: “These maids have no communication to the outside world, they’re starved and beaten – this is slavery.
“They’re not allowed to have mobile phones. To exploit the maids employers don’t let them communicate with their families back home, so they won’t run away for other opportunities.”
Recalling her abuse, Wube said: “When my employer wanted to get rid of me she made me sign a contract in Arabic that I have settled everything with her. But I didn’t understand what I was signing.
“She took me to the airport without shoes and any luggage, gave me my flight tickets and asked me to leave.
“But I was stopped by authorities. They said ‘where are you going without shoes?’” Consul-General Alemu said Wube has now received her outstanding salary of Dhs9,000 and will be heading back to Ethiopia today.
Ethiopia currently has a ban on its nationals coming to the UAE as domestic workers, but Alemu said the two maids started work before his government implemented it last year. Addis Abada said such a ban would remain in place until there is an agreement reached to protect its nationals from abusive employers.
“There are 90,000 Ethiopians in the UAE and most of them are maids,” Alemu said.
Lola Lopez founder of the humanitarian group Babies Behind Bars, which also helps maids who are abused, said some were being denied basic human rights.
She said: “Some people have no regard for human life. Welfare organisations haven’t been able to help much, because the message they send out doesn’t always reach the women it’s supposed to. Many of these maids don’t read the newspaper and they don’t have phones.
“O God, in whose hands is punishment, O God of punishment, let your shining face be seen. Be lifted up, O judge of the earth; let their reward come to the men of pride.
How long will sinners, O Lord, how long will sinners have joy over us?
Words of pride come from their lips; all the workers of evil say great things of themselves.
Your people are crushed by them, O Lord, your heritage is troubled,
They put to death the widow and the guest, they take the lives of children who have no father; And they say, Jah will not see it, the God of Jacob will not give thought to it.“